diff --git a/src/main/java/de/ids_mannheim/korap/query/SpanElementDistanceQuery.java b/src/main/java/de/ids_mannheim/korap/query/SpanElementDistanceQuery.java
deleted file mode 100644
index f6cb836..0000000
--- a/src/main/java/de/ids_mannheim/korap/query/SpanElementDistanceQuery.java
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,60 +0,0 @@
-package de.ids_mannheim.korap.query;
-
-import java.io.IOException;
-import java.util.Map;
-
-import org.apache.lucene.index.AtomicReaderContext;
-import org.apache.lucene.index.Term;
-import org.apache.lucene.index.TermContext;
-import org.apache.lucene.search.spans.SpanQuery;
-import org.apache.lucene.search.spans.Spans;
-import org.apache.lucene.util.Bits;
-
-import de.ids_mannheim.korap.query.spans.ElementDistanceSpan;
-
-/** Match two ordered Spans with minimum and maximum distance constraints.
- * 	In this query, the distance unit is the difference between two element 
- * 	positions, where the elements can be sentence or paragraph elements.
- * 
- * 	@author margaretha
- * */
-public class SpanElementDistanceQuery extends SpanDistanceQuery {
-	
-	private SpanQuery elementQuery;
-	
-	public SpanElementDistanceQuery(SpanQuery elementQuery, 
-			SpanQuery firstClause, SpanQuery secondClause, 
-			int minDistance, int maxDistance, 
-			boolean collectPayloads) {
-		super(firstClause, secondClause, minDistance, maxDistance, collectPayloads);
-		this.elementQuery = elementQuery;    	    	
-	}
-	
-	@Override
-	public SpanElementDistanceQuery clone() {
-		SpanElementDistanceQuery query = new SpanElementDistanceQuery(
-			(SpanQuery) elementQuery.clone(),
-		    (SpanQuery) firstClause.clone(),
-		    (SpanQuery) secondClause.clone(),			    
-		    this.minDistance,
-		    this.maxDistance,
-		    this.collectPayloads
-        );
-		query.setBoost(getBoost());
-		return query;	
-	}
-
-	@Override
-	public Spans getSpans(AtomicReaderContext context, Bits acceptDocs,
-			Map<Term, TermContext> termContexts) throws IOException {		
-		return new ElementDistanceSpan(this,context, acceptDocs,termContexts);
-	}
-
-	public SpanQuery getElementQuery() {
-		return elementQuery;
-	}
-
-	public void setElementQuery(SpanQuery elementQuery) {
-		this.elementQuery = elementQuery;
-	}
-}